NEW YORK The metaphor that connects all the roles of the passage is the script writer; the ‘script’ is written using the tools of surface, space and time. This fictional structure reads as a palimpsest, integral to the city.
The script makes a series of continuous connections from the urban fabric to the waterfront, using the streetscape as a sequence of temporal events. A reinvented subway creates new connections to existing major points of interest.
The juxtaposition of spatial movement and temporal networks redirects experience through the surface of the city. By creating hybrid connections within its local moments, informal and chance encounters are encouraged; temporary events and displacement of fixed programs constitute an irregular and unique journey.
The majority of public space in Lower Manhattan is streetscape; public spaces of passage. The intention is to create points in these passages for the possibility of displacement from the context of the surroundings, for reflection. More specifically, the intention is to be made aware of an alternative passage of movement to the grid, thereby undermining the grid.
Each intervention performs this function, individually at a local scale, cumulatively at an urban scale. The surface, spatial and temporal tools I use to create these interventions are extracted as frozen moments from initial analyses of certain passages through time and space. These tools are then interpreted into an architectural language, observed within the context of the city, and applied as hybrids to create new moments within a narrative on the streetscape.
The points are displaced in layers both above and below the orthogonal grid, transforming the streetscape into a palimpsest; the ground having two successive ‘texts’ written onto it, the former grid inscription being erased to allow for the new armature of spaces to embed in its surface.
